If any kind-hearted YORF'ers out there are physically at NARAM and experienced with electronic deployment, I could really use a little tutoring/sanity check Thursday (preferably) or Friday. I've got a model going up Friday that for reasons I don't want to get into has a HUGE personal bunch of karma riding on it, and it absolutely has to have a successful timer-based deployment. I'm new to that particular skill, feel decent about how to handle it, but am nervous enough due to the importance of the flight that I could use a "sensei" to briefly go over the ropes with me, check the setup, etc. Free beer/food/motors or something aplenty.

If any kind-hearted YORF'ers out there are physically at NARAM and experienced with electronic deployment, I could really use a little tutoring/sanity check Thursday (preferably) or Friday. I've got a model going up Friday that for reasons I don't want to get into has a HUGE personal bunch of karma riding on it, and it absolutely has to have a successful timer-based deployment. I'm new to that particular skill, feel decent about how to handle it, but am nervous enough due to the importance of the flight that I could use a "sensei" to briefly go over the ropes with me, check the setup, etc. Free beer/food/motors or something aplenty.

--Chan Stevens

Chan....I can't help but it sure sounds like a "championship" is riding on this. If you needed a hammer, though, I could have been of some help. Wait, no I couldn't since I'm not there..

Since I can never count on you to show up these days, I splurged and bought myself another hammer from all that prize money I got for winning in 2007 .

Yes, it's a huge deal to me because I was in the midst of putting together a pretty phenomenal comeback and overtaking Chad by hitting a 7500+ point NARAM and overtaking his 3000 point lead over me. After last night's scoring of static, though, I'm completely out of the running. There are some darned fine models on the tables, and I'm not taking anything away from my competitors, but in peanut scale especially there are some models ahead of me, and the scoring gap so large, that I really had to do a double-take. I spoke with the judge afterwards, and while I did have a decal placed on the wrong side of the model and another decal (checkerboard sort of pattern) with spacing a bit off between the colored squares, I got the second lowest fit/finish/markings score on the table and same craftsmanship scores as a number of models that most folks would think aren't quite at the same level. It seems like the gist of the issue is that I was judged to a color getting-ready-for-launch photo rather than the drawing I provided in the data pack with a number of annotations, and that's a bit different than how we've been judged in the past.

It's all part of the way it goes, though, but since Chad tells me there's potentially a loophole in the way the curse works that says if I manage to reclaim the championship I won't die, I figured it was a pretty important thing and the fact that he's going to clean my clock on craftsmanship day (he'll take first in both events barring a mental error or something) was really not something I (or he) expected.

Wow....bummer for you. I've been following the scores and I just couldn't believe how many points are up for grabs in 1/8 A helicopter! Winning that put you in a very good position. I figured the only thing that could take you out would be the scale and R&D since they have a lot of weighing factors. But you know how capricious the rocket gods can be at NARAM....don't give up yet. Man, those Launch Crue guys are taking some serious hardware this year.......

The flight pranged, electronics failed, cost me 1600 meet points (was first in static, would probably have held on with the cluster points). No idea what went wrong--flight was fantastic, MUCH faster/higher than the boilerplate, but I'd gone 3xC6 instead of B6, pushing razor thin stability margins. Timer needs 2g for half second to convince itself it's flying versus being carried to the pad, and I think I'd certainly cleared that. Continuity and start-up chirps were fine on the rod. Post-flight doesn't look like it fired on the inside of the tube, but the sleeve on the xmas bulb was gone, and it was heat shrink on there pretty good. Might have dislodged the powder (held in tube by crumpled wadding rammed in tightly, loose wiring (doubtful--it was hard pulling it out post-flight), maybe a timer loosely mounted jiggling around. In any case, that one flight wound up bumping me from 1st to 2nd for the meet, from 2nd to 3rd for the year, wiped out what would obviously have been a top placement event trophy/medal, and destroyed what was a darned fine model .

Very frustrating . I eventually plan on building another one, since all the hard work's already done (scaling, spec'ing parts, working out the stability, etc.). Well, everything except figuring out how to deploy anything...

Beautiful model Chan. Any pieces make it into the best midwest qualified flight trophy? I guess the electronics was needed since the motors were in the outboards. Looking forward to seeing your Giant sport scale for next year. Looks like I'll be competing this coming year as well so I'll get to see you again at some of the Launch Crue regionals. Family wants a trip to Colorado. Congratulations on your success this past year.

None of the pieces made it into the trophy, because I was scrambling to get it rebiult for a refly. Just ran out of time. 5 more minutes and the carcass would have gone back up, and probably taken first or second. Chad had a darned fine Ares in second at static, not sure how he wound up on mission but came in second to Mark Chrumka, who swept both craftsmanship events.

I did, in an attempt to hold off on winning another BMQF, try to officially sponsor it. There was a Saturn Celebration contest over the weekend, with anyone flying a Saturn getting an entry. I flew a few, and won a set of decals. The whole sheet was nothing but various size/colors of CP/CG symbols. I gave them to Chad to present to the eventual winner (Chad replaced Bob K as the head of BMQF this year).

Chan, that was a great looking model! I understand having a central motor would not have been exactly to "scale", but for sake of reliability and your personal karma, why didn't you just go with a central motor w/motor ejection(plus the outboards)? I can't imagine they would have penalized too greatly for that....however, I'm not all that familiar with scoring, so bear with me.

The scoring would probably have dinged me about 50 points out of 750 or so, knocking me down a place or two. For me, though, it was the principle of the thing--the rocket featured 3 outboards, so by gummit my model would. The outboards were fine, it was my own lack of experience with electronics that did me in, and being too cheap (unemployed) to build multiple boilerplates dialing everything in.

Probably the most frustrating aspect of it is that since my first NARAM, I've placed in every craftsmanship event until this one flight/zero points. I had also won every NARAM since the first one. Both of those streaks came to an end. I've now got to settle for 6 of 8 lifetime batting average placing in NARAM craftsmanship events.

I do plan on building another one, as once I figured out the design it was really not too tough. The kicker? That little hatch on the bottom dome is supposed to be for extry/exit of crew. Jack Haggerty gave me a little grief for not making it a functional hatch. One of the reasons I went with a g-switch to activate the timer instead of break wires was because I didn't have a handy place to run the wires out without drilling or something. Of course, if I made that a functional hatch...